From the Road

This last week I was in Michigan so that in-laws can meet the new kiddo. Sounds fun right? I was going to post daily about the trip, but that became a bit...tedious. instead I decided to sum it all up in one post. Aren't you excited?

Day One: After sleeping till 11 (Aunt watched Beemer in the morning), read the XKCD comics (500+ of the frakking things) and had marshmallow and pistachio pudding pie (Why? Right now I have no idea)

Day Two: Spent an hour and a half on the "Denver pop culture" thread at Boingboing. Started to read Penny Arcade.

Day Three: Finished Penny Arcade (they've been doing webcomics for 10 frakking years!) then found the Oddtodd has new stuff!

Day Four: Lost in the virtual wasteland that is Youtube. Then drove to Grand Rapids.

Day Five: Toured my father-in-law's slot machine factory - pretty damn cool. I realized that I need a computer controlled 10000 watt laser cutter. Took a nap.

Day Six: Last Day! Thanks to a friend, read some of the Ctrl+Alt+Del comics. I Then played online poker for a few hours. Most of the day was spent dealing with a fussy child, I think he's ready to go home now too. Or it could be the Oreo blizzard he tried last night. Finished off the day watching Unskippable.

Thank the gods for the internet, and broadband, and being home...

A "Wonderful" trip

Yesterday we disembarked from the Disney Wonder cruiseliner, the "magical" place I've been trapped for the last 4 days. I find myself loving the word "disembarked", more than I ever thought I might.

Don't get me wrong, the boat is beautiful, the weather was great, and the food was both over plentiful and pretty good. The biggest drawback is that it's a Disney ship, which means that it was four days of screaming children and over-medicated, over-happy employees.

Being a Disney attraction, there were lines. Lots and lots of lines: lines for food, lines for drinks, lines for elevators, there were even lines for the gorram ketchup. I don't even want to talk about the midnight snack and dessert lines.

The crew was friendly, actually a bit too friendly. Despite what the crew kept telling me, it's not a good morning when I'm dragging a crying kid to breakfast at 7 frakking o'clock in the morning. They also had this irritating habit of announcing that day's events every 15 minutes. Fortunately most of the time it was only in the hallways (which you can hear from the cabin). We even had the luck to get a couple of announcements that the crew thought were important enough to be announced inside our cabin very loudly (and weren't really that important).

The Disney private island is insane. There's a single beach with 3 thousand people on it, all running to be the first one there and get the best spot. That makes for a lot of bleached white people crowding together. With the exception of the occasional entertaining bikini, there was a lot of scariness. Then all 3 thousand people began to attempt to snorkel - I stress the word attempt. It was quickly clear why they required everyone to wear a snorkel vest.

The last day was...short. We were supposed to leave the boat at 6AM. That's right, get up, eat and get the hell off the boat NOW! We actually had until 9:30, but there was absolutely NO sleeping in. At 6:45, they started regular in-room announcements telling us we could leave the boat.

Anyway, it's good to be back ashore. Now just another day till I'm home and away from the inlaws! Actually it hasn't been bad, just chaotic - going from no children to 3 in a few hours is a little shocking. I'm just looking forward to a few glasses of Fat Tire (which isn't available east of the Mississippi).

Mmmmmmm...Fat Tire.....